I’ve noticed in my social media feeds that there is a new church in my area whose marketing strategy is aimed at getting people to switch churches. They are presenting themselves as an authentic church for people who are tired of all the fluff. (1)
As a pastor, there are a few things about this that bother me. 1. In a city exploding with new residents, many of them unchurched or without a church home, this should be the main aim in our outreach. (2)
2. Who defines what is “inauthentic” or “fluff”? Are there criteria for qualifying a person to make that judgment? Firsthand knowledge of willful duplicity and superficiality? Or is this just a judgment a person is able to make based on brief observations from a distance? (3)
I know many, many pastors in this town who are very faithful, strong people—people who have faithfully studied and proclaimed the whole counsel of God’s word week in and week out, people who have been on scene at horrific tragedies… (4)
people who have taught little children who Jesus is, people who have sat the beside of dying congregants, people who have ministered weekly to shut-ins and the elderly, people who have taken a low wage and held little visible public platform… (5)
people who wear clothes from ten years ago, and drive cars from even further back because they have given their lives to walking alongside a community of people as their pastor, earning the pastor’s wage. (6)
Pastors do things most people never see—deep, “walk-along-side-people” stuff that is born out of dedication to their vocational calling. (7)
To suggest that a congregant or worse, a person with loose a affiliation with the local church, is in a position to just the authenticity of any pastor or church dishonors the people who minister in quiet faithfulness. (8)
3. Do you really want a church full of people who have deemed the all the other local churches as inauthentic or fluffy? (9)
4. Local churches should befriend each other—within denominational lines and across them. If our aim is to love our city, we should regard ourselves as being on the same team, and also live that out in the ways we work together and speak of one another. (10)
5. Marketing a church by focusing on how it compares to other churches lacks humility and is, well, unkind. (11)
I realize there is a tinge of irony in my speaking critically on social media about a church’s critical social media marketing strategy. (12)
I don’t know anything about the church itself, other than what I see of their marketing. That’s what I’m commenting on here, their marketing strategy. (13)
I know too many pastors in town, what they do, how they’ve cared for people, and how they pray for people, so I guess I’m feeling a bit defensive. Presenting one church as the solution to what other churches in town are getting wrong makes a strong theological assertion. (Fin)
